anywhere to be seen in the
second-story window of the brick schoolhouse. Dr. Bidlow is no more! The
trees that seemed so large, the gymnastic feats that were so
extraordinary, the boy that made a snapper of his handkerchief,--have
all lost their greatness and their dread. Even the springy usher, who
dressed his hair with the ferule, has become the middle-aged father of
five curly-headed boys, and has entered upon what once seemed the
gigantic commerce of "stationery and account-books."

The marvellous labyrinth of closets at the old mansion where you once
paid a visit--in a coach--is all dissipated. They have turned out to be
the merest cupboards in the wall. Nat, who had travelled and seen
London, is by no means so surprising a fellow to your manhood as he was
to the boy. He has grown spare, and wears spectacles. He is not so
famous as he was. You would hardly think of consulting him now about
your marriage, or even about the price of goats upon London Bridge.

As for Jenny,--your first, fond flame!--lively, romantic, black-eyed
Jenny,--the reader of "Thaddeus of Warsaw,"--who sighed and wore blue
ribbons on her bonnet,--who wrote love-notes,--who talked so tenderly of
broken hearts,--who used a glass seal with a Cupid and a dart,--dear
Jenny!--she is now the plump and thriving wife of the apothecary of the
town! She sweeps out every morning at seven the little entry of the
apothecary's house; she buys a "joint" twice a week from the butcher,
and is particular to have the "knuckle" thrown in for soups; she wears a
sky-blue calico gown, and dresses her hair in three little flat quirls
on either side of her head, each one pierced through with a two-pronged
hair-pin.

She does not read "Thaddeus of Warsaw" now.

II.

_Man of the World._

Few persons live through the first periods of manhood without strong
temptations to be counted "men of the world." The idea looms grandly
among those vanities that hedge a man's approach to maturity.

Clarence is in good training for the acceptance of this idea. The broken
hope, which clouded his closing youth, shoots over its influence upon
the dawn of manhood. Mortified pride had taught--as it always
teaches--not caution only, but doubt, distrust, indifference. A new
pride grows up on the ruins of the old, weak, and vain pride of youth.
Then it was a pride of learning, or of affection; now it is a pride of
indifference. Then the world proved bleak and cold, as contrasted